Is this just another newbie ache and pain that will go away with more miles? At about the 30 mile mark my neck really hurts. Everything else feels ok. The bike seems to fit well.

Take a couple days off, take some NSAIDs before bed. After the couple days has passed, start stretching.
Do stretching and neck exercises for a couple days. If you don't bounce back, stop listening to idiots like me and see a Doc

I disagree. I assume you are riding a regular road bike where you are hunched over the handlebars and are forced to look "up" to see ahead. If so and if your neck pain goes away shortly after you get off the bike or lingers only as a muscular ache, it is normal for someone who has not been riding much recently. It is just muscular strain from your posterior neck muscles holding up the weight of your head and helmet when you ride. I get it every spring when I start taking longer outdoor rides. I think you should just gut it out. You neck muscles will strengthen and the pain will go away in a week or two. Stretching your neck is a good idea and you might want to try some aspirin if necessary but I think this is normal for a beginning cyclist. Of course, I am no doctor.

45 minutes minutes into a ride I move my head around touching each shoulder with my chin and streching my neck. Strech/look down, up, right, left, make a big arc. Do that about every 10 minutes there after and no more neck pain for me.

I too suffered when I bought a new bike. Surfing these forums helped. Here's what I learned:
Pull your elbows in and don't lock your elbows. If you are, maybe your stem is lower, or longer than it needs to be for you. In any event, avoid the vulture look, elbows wide, head down, shoulders up.

You probably won't believe me but I will throw this out there anyway. That pain in the neck after 30 miles or so is a classic symptom of magnesium defficiency. We don't get enough magnesium in our diets these days and exercise depletes what magnesium we have so after a decent ride we just go into deficiency.

Magnesium is a muscle relaxer so when you become deficient your muscles start tensing up and that pain in the neck is the first place I start getting it too.

Here's a reference on Magnesium, https://www.healthy.net/asp/templates...Article&ID=541

It talks about serious magnesium defficiency but it has to start somewhere. Calcium and Magnesium are antagonistic so I would be avoiding too much dairy/calcium foods when exercising.

Regards, Anthony

yep. mine does the same thing. I do shrugs like a mad man int he gym and it still hurts. I try to keep my head down as much as possible and my back flat. we have bike lanes here so I look up every minute or so just to make sure there's nothing in my path and then put my head back down so that I'm really only looking about 10 ft in front of the bike.

Thanks for all the advice. Especially those of you who only play a doctor on TV. The pain does go away pretty soon after I'm off the bike. I'll try some stretching. And ibuprofen seems to be magic.

I have changed the cockpit of my bike recently and did a few of 1 - .5 hour rides. During and after the first couple of rides, my upper shoulders, and neck were sore. Muscle tightness type of sorness, but very stiff and sore around the shoulder blades, between the shoulder blades, the trapezius muscles (neck to shoulder) and my neck. It wasn't debilitating, but very uncomfortable.

Today I did the longest ride of the year, around 2 hours. I felt pretty good during the ride and feel fine now (several hours later). A very significant improvement over yesterday and the day before. What I think helped:

Just putting some time in and getting the muscles tuned up a little.

Concentrating on relaxing my shoulders while riding. I definitely was hunching them and keeping my arms too straight. I constantly reminded myself to relax my shoulders and tricepts muscles, relaxing my arms, slacking them at the elbows. I think this was a huge help, but it takes some thought and time to develop the habit.

Finally, for the past two days, I've been stretching. For me, stretching is the missing link in all my athletic endeavors. I concentrated on shoulders and neck but also did legs and hips. I think this is also very important in my improvement.

Good luck.

There may be one quick fix your mother may have been telling you your entire life: "don't slouch!" Try to keep your back straight and you won't have to strain your neck as much to look up. It's helped me; my neck used to ache pretty bad (now just kinda bad). It can be difficult to keep your back straight when tired, but I believe it's probably the optimum position to be riding in anyway. One "problem" I've had is that the habit has carried over to my life off the bike; I'm standing and sitting up straight all the time now, and it's kinda weird

Except that if your fit is good you don't need to crane your neck up to see where you are going.

Good notes...this is called "technique" and is as important to cycling as any other sport. Riding position is just as important as shooting free throws or anything else...

But if your fit's no good, the rest does not matter.

Like this....

I see guys riding and their Adam's apple sticks out their necks are bent so far upward...just so they can see. But they've got 15mm of drop because they saw it in a photo and think they should set their bike's up the same way.

And I ask, "Neck hurt?"

"Oh, definitely."

Bike riding's not supposed to hurt.

What's the difference in height from the top of your saddle to your handlebars? How tall are you? You say the "bike seems to fit well" but you are getting neck pain - what does that mean?

I used to get neck pain and switched from a 120mm to a 110mm stem and flipped it so it was angle upwards. That helped a lot.

If your stem is currently flipped downwards, then maybe you could just try riding with it angled upwards and see how you go? There is no harm in trying it out to see if it helps, it only takes 10 minutes to flip it.

You really shouldn't have to be taking pain killers after a 30-mile ride!!